Royston Wildlife Blog: UK Wildlife Sightings December 2022

A couple of trips early in the month highlighted the vagaries of bird watching. A juvenile grey phalarope had taken up residence at Isleham near Mildenhall, a 45 minute drive away from my house, from the beginning of the month. Having arrived at the site on the 5th, I found a couple of bird watchers watching it swimming around almost at their feet, picking tiny invertebrates off the water - the standard method of feeding for this unusual wader. I was able to get close enough to this (typically) confiding bird to get some decent photographs (below). Two days later I was off again to the Norfolk coast, this time to see a Hume's warbler (a tiny Siberian-breeding bird, closely related to yellow-browed warbler) at Brancaster. Having found the site (a row of bushes and small trees close to the sea) I had to wait, along with other bird watchers, for well over an hour in freezing conditions before I heard what I first assumed was a distant pied wagtail. However, the others immediately sprang into action and, a minute or so later, I was looking at my first UK Hume's warbler, with its greyish back, obvious wing bar, strong, pale supercilium and distinctive two note call (which I had mistaken for that of a pied wagtail - oh dear). This was one occasion when I felt that it was more important to observe rather than to photograph, as the bird fed in amongst the dense bushes, frequently disappearing from view, for 5-7 minutes. So, on one occasion, a rare bird was very easy to see and on the other occasion far more difficult. However, I was at least lucky to come away having seen both! I had time, having seen the warbler, to move on to RSPB Titchwell Marsh to do some wader photography.

Juvenile Grey Phalarope, Isleham, 5 December

Bar-tailed Godwit, RSPB Titchwell Marsh, 7 December

A rare, sunny day on the 9th saw me visiting St Albans. There was plenty of ice on the lake at Verulamium Park, but the river was still flowing and a pair of kingfishers were using the clear water to fish for 'tiddlers'. Quite a few photographers had come along to photograph these birds, which often posed just a few feet away. However, the background vegetation was usually very messy and, when the birds dived to try to catch fish, the river bank was too dark and the birds too fast for me to get anything other than a blur. Nevertheless, I did manage one or two 'very attractive bird on a stick' photos.

Male Kingfisher, St Albans, 9 December

From Verulamium Park I moved on to the tiny, but very attractive Watercress Local Nature Reserve nearby. This is an excellent spot for watching siskins feeding in the alder trees, next to the River Ver, in winter. On my visit a water rail was also showing, but there was no sign of lesser redpolls here on this occasion.

Female Siskin, Watercress LNR, St Albans

On the 11th I went on an RSPB 'own transport' trip to Rutland Water (Egleton Reserve). For various reasons (not least the foggy, icy, frosty weather) only two of us made it, but we enjoyed visiting many of the 25 hides on the reserve and compiled a list of 66 bird species recorded (64 seen). One interesting sighting was that of a fox walking across the ice in front of the visitor centre towards a pair of swans that were swimming in a small patch of water surrounded by the ice. The fox circled the water a couple of times, yawned and slowly trotted off. Would it have regarded the swans as prey? If it had attacked them, I suspect that it would have come off worse!

Stonechat, Rutland Water, 11 December

Male Goldeneye, Rutland Water, 11 December

Black-tailed Godwit, Rutland Water, 11 December

Fox and Mute Swans, Rutland Water, 11 December

I visited Lynford Arboretum on the 16th to set up a bird feeding station and photograph the woodland birds. I had hoped to find snow there to use in my set-up, but unfortunately the snow had not reached this far north. When I looked through the images I had obtained, it was noticeable how many marsh tits must have been using the station - the arboretum must be one of the best places in the country to see (and photograph) this species.

Marsh Tit, Lynford Arboretum, 16 December

On the 21st I was back on the Norfolk coast (Holkham and Titchwell), looking to add one or two last bird species (velvet scoter and woodcock, in particular) to my year list. I may have seen the former in amongst the large flocks of distant common scoters at Holkham, but couldn't get an unambiguous sighting (not helped by having a bad back, which made it impossible to look through my telescope for any length of time before having to change position). However, as I was returning to the car I did notice a buzzard with a pale head sitting on a distant gate post to the west of Lady Ann's Drive. My photos were inconclusive, but did point to the bird possibly being a juvenile rough-legged buzzard ('record shot' below). Subsequent sightings of (presumably) the same bird reached the same conclusion, without providing confirmation. As the reader may have noticed, I am rather hooked on photographing waders at Titchwell and it was here that I effectively finished my year's bird watching. No woodcocks put in an appearance here, leaving me with a UK 2022 year list of 231 species (or 232, if the identity of the rough-legged buzzard can be confirmed).